Lately since I have two 12 inch Simrads on my helm I have been running my side scan differently than I usually do. In this pic I have the bottom half of my screen looking to the right side of the boat and I use my other unit to look to the left side of the boat. This way I can utilize more screen area to see clearly out to the sides of the boat. [Instead of looking left and right on a 12 in screen seeing only 6 inches either side I can see side scan twice as well.] To understand what I am seeing here, the boat is just under the 0 and everything below it is history where I have recently been. The dark blue is the actual water column [34'] then the signal starts bouncing off the bottom and water column out 80 feet to the right. All I actually see in this shot are a couple fish out 50 to 55 feet from the boat. [lighter vertical dashes]. On the sonar screen above side scan the boat again is under the 0 with the screen scrolling right to left, the large bait ball of Herring is behind the boat 30 to 60 yards. The horizontal line at 28 feet is one of my baits which got hit about half way across the screen when you loose the line and below it are Stripers. The fish stole the bait and we did not hook up.
Here is a great example of utilizing side scan. I am in a 100 foot scale looking out to the right side of the boat. Looking at the sonar I am not going over much, just a couple little fish about 30 feet deep. I am running my big motor at 3 mph which is obviously spooking the Stripers which are avoiding the boat but if you look on side scan 35 to 60 feet to the right of the boat are very nice Stripers. They show up as the lighter vertical lines. In perspective I again I am going 3mph and the larger fish are actually closer to the boat and they stayed in the beam of the ducer for quite awhile, telling me they were larger fish. Also they are very bright sending back a good return. The black lines from 50 to 80 feet are actually the shadows of the larger fish. Then out around 55 feet are a couple of smaller fish. Boat motors do spook fish, especially on pressured waters like Lake Anna.
Here I am going over pods of punk Stripers. Their returns are fairly week and they are inactive. No fish out to the right side of the boat but my other unit showed numerous fish out to the left.
Here are some active Stripers, not very large [20 inches] but feeding. They are "streaking" in the water column indicating they are moving up and down rapidly trying to feed. The light horizontal line at 16 feet is my bait, it had been previously hit and was dead, fish were not interested in a dead bait.
Again in this shot nothing under the boat, a few nice Stripers out to the right side about 40 feet with nice shadows. The majority of the fish were on the left unit again. Hope these screen shots help interpreting what you are seeing on your unit. I purposely did not show pics of large schools of big fish, when we are on them all the rods are bent over. Check out our website at www.JimHemby.com or contact us at Jim_Hemby@hotmail.com 540 967 3313 or 540 223 0850, you will be glad you did!
